Alphonse Aulard

Aulard, Alphonse (älfôNsˈ ōlärˈ) [key], 1849–1928, French historian. He was the first professional historian of the French Revolution, and he devoted his life to this study. A professor at the Univ. of Paris, he founded the Société de l'Histoire de la Révolution and the bimonthly review Révolution française. Aulard regarded the conservative interpretation of Taine as prejudiced; nevertheless, he himself clearly represented the republican, bourgeois, and anticlerical concept of the Revolution. He concentrated on political history. Some of his students, notably Albert Mathiez, broke with his emphasis and turned to social and economic issues. Aulard's works include several large collections of edited material, notably Recueil des actes des comité de salut public (16 vol., 1889–1904) and La Société des Jacobins (6 vol., 1889–97); his major studies are Études et leçons sur la Révolution française (9 vol., 1893–1924), Histoire politique de la Révolution française (1901; tr. The French Revolution: A Political History, 4 vol., 1910, repr. 1965), Les Grands Orateurs de la Révolution: Mirabeau, Vergniaud, Danton, Robespierre (1914), and La Révolution française et le régime féodal (1919).